


Enjoy Your Drink

by taylor_tut



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Connor (Detroit: Become Human) Whump, Drabble, Gen, Hurt Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Minor Violence, Punching, Whump, they don't make up, they fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-26 15:16:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15665829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylor_tut/pseuds/taylor_tut
Summary: A drabble request from my tumblr for Hank punching Connor and Connor apologizing for making him angry.





	1. Chapter 1

Hank had been up for nearly 48 hours.

He’d been up for nearly 48 hours without a drink, and he needed one, badly. The problem was that he couldn’t get away from the case, so he found himself instead hiding in the maintenance closet, stealing sips from an old silver flask he hadn’t used in years, one that was filled with some kind of nasty-ass cheap whiskey, which was putting him in a somehow worse mood than if he hadn’t been drinking at all. He wondered, as he often did, why he’d bother, but it was easier to unscrew the cap and take another swig than to look at his own reflection in the chrome. 

“Lieutenant,” Connor startled him enough to make him jump, hitting his head on the shelf directly above him, “I found a lead that you might—” he trailed off, processing. “Are you drinking in here?” His tone was icy, still. This was an interrogation.

“What of it?” Hank asked, slowly, deliberately, shamelessly taking another sip from the flask.

Connor frowned. “You’re on the clock,” he accused. 

“I’m always fuckin’ on the clock,” Hank argued, “with you around. Gotta live sometime.”

“Drinking is not living, Lieutenant,” Connor pointed out. Hank scoffed. 

“What the fuck would you know about living?” 

Connor’s LED flashed yellow for a moment, then he broke eye contact. 

“I guess nothing,” he admitted tersely; he intentionally censored the next statement. Hank could see it happen.

“You’re not saying something,” Hank taunted. 

“I’m not saying anything,” Connor agreed, and whether it was the two-day-waking haze or the alcohol, his fucking human-appeasing program didn’t sit right with him. Connor had the unique ability to hold his tongue when a human couldn’t. Hank always knew what Gavin thought of him, what Fowler thought of him; fuck, he even knew when he pissed Sumo off. But with Connor, he felt judged in a way that didn’t make sense, in a way that he shouldn’t care about, in a way that made him feel like a deadbeat dad or the let-down brother. And Connor wouldn’t tell him so. He pushed Connor up against the wall of the closet threateningly, holding him by the shirt.

“Say it,” Hank instructed, snarling when Connor looked genuinely confused. “You know what I’m talking about; don’t act like you don’t.”

“Lieutenant, I—,” Connor started, but he didn’t have a chance to finish what was sure to be a bullshit placating response, because Hank punched him in the stomach. 

And suddenly he was sober.

He’d punched a coworker in the stomach. He’d punched CONNOR in the stomach. The kid dropped to one knee, holding the spot where Hank had hit him, but his face was expressionless. When Connor stumbled back to his feet, his LED was solid red, then yellow, then red again as Hank apologized. 

“Fuck, kid,” he swore, “I didn’t—I’m—”

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant,” Connor apologized calmly, his LED still red, “I can handle the lead on my own. I shouldn’t have bothered you.”

Hank blinked. “What?” he asked incredulously. “What the fuck are you apologizing for?”

“I clearly upset you,” Connor said. His hand was still hovering over the place Hank had punched him. Hank didn’t know what he broke, but Connor wouldn’t keep his hand there like that for no reason, and something clearly needed repairs. His LED was yellow again, cycling and cycling but turning no more blue.

Hank shook his head. “No, kid; I shouldn’t have—”

Connor cut him off by turning toward the door. “I’ll… I’ll be running some background checks on our—my—lead.” Hank didn’t miss how stiff he was when he turned to leave. “Enjoy your drink, Lieutenant.” 


	2. Second Chance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be a one-shot drabble but the general consensus was that I needed to Fix That Ending, so here you go! it's still up in the air but i like my fucked-up characters the way i like my coffee: morally ambiguous

It took hours before Hank talked to Connor again. 

More specifically, it took hours before Connor stopped avoiding Hank for long enough to confront him. Connor needed to check out the crime scene one more time, and Hank was the only person who could drive him. Technically, he could wait until morning and request to have someone else work the case with him—it’s what anyone else would do. But that would be an inconvenience to another detective, and Connor was all about optimizing time and resources. If it meant he had to be uncomfortable, he’d be uncomfortable.

It wasn’t that Hank didn’t want to apologize; it’s that he didn’t know how to begin. This wasn’t just another fuck-up. He’d hit Connor. He’d  _ hurt _ Connor. He had no way to gauge how badly, either, because Connor wouldn’t even look at him. He wished that this was even half the punishment he deserved, wished that Connor would just stoop to his level for a minute and be petty enough to dole out revenge that would ease his guilt. 

Instead, he just had to listen to the abnormally loud whirring of Connor’s thirium pump in the car on the way to the crime scene. 

Hank just drove. 

Connor licked things at the crime scene and Hank didn’t say a word about it. Connor collected evidence and catalogued it and everything was boring and official and  _ wrong _ .

It wasn’t until the car ride home that Hank found himself unable to bite his tongue anymore. 

“Can you just yell at me or something? I can’t take this silent treatment.”

Connor blinked. His LED spun yellow. “Yell at you?” he echoed confusedly. “Why would I do that?”

Hank’s jaw dropped. “Maybe because I fucking punched you in the gut earlier?”

Back to blue. “Oh,” he replied simply. And then he didn’t continue. The car was heating up and Hank was beginning to wonder if it wasn’t just him.

“‘Oh?’” Hank pressed. “‘Oh’ what?”

Connor hesitated for a long moment. “Just… ‘oh.’ You’re not obligated to apologize to me, Lieutenant. I am a machine. I don’t feel pain.”

“Doesn’t mean I got any right to hit you,” Hank argued.

“Gavin does it.” 

“And Gavin’s a prick. I’ll talk to him.” His grip tightened on the steering wheel in a way that implied he was going to do more than talk, but Connor shook his head. 

“No,” he argued. “It’s fine. Like I said: I don’t feel pain.”

“That doesn’t make it fine,” he fought, fiddling with the air conditioning at a stoplight before realizing that it was winter and he shouldn’t have to turn that on at all, “is it fucking hot in here?”

Connor nodded. “The internal repairs that are running in the background are overheating my systems a bit,” he admitted. “I can pause them—”

Hank reached over to press his hand to Connor’s forehead and pulling it back when Connor’s LED flashed red for a moment, a sort of flinch without flinching. 

“You’re telling me that you’re puttin’ off all that heat?” Connor hesitated before nodding again. “And it’s because I damaged you?” 

“Lieutenant—”

“Just answer the damn question, kid.”

“Yes.”

Hank pulled back into the precinct parking lot and cut the engine off. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, raising an objecting hand when Connor opened his mouth to say something, “don’t argue it. It’ll never happen again, but it shouldn’t’ve happened in the first place. And you don’t have to say it’s okay, ‘cause it’s not.”

“Then I won’t,’ Connor replied evenly. “Repairing parts that shouldn’t be broken is a needless expenditure of my energy.” 

“I know,” Hank agreed, happy to at least be hearing some kind of reaction from Connor and not wanting to make him stop until he’d finished what he had to say.

“And intentionally damaging Cyberlife property is in direct violation of your contract as an officer of the DPD,” he continued.

“I know,” Hank agreed.

“And I trusted you, Hank,” Connor finished with a slight waver in his voice. “We’re partners, and I thought we were friends. Unless my data on friendship is wrong, friends don’t harm one another on purpose.”

“No, I’m just a shitty one,” Hank admitted. “Friend, that is. Well, a lot of other things, too. Add it to the list.”

Connor made no noise except the whirring of his biocomponents.

“Some of the data I have on friendship suggests that friends give one another second chances,” he finally ventured.

Hank nodded. “Well, that’s your call. You only give second chances if you really think that something’s gonna change. That someONE’s gonna change.”

His LED cycled back to blue.

“I think I’d like to give one to you.”

He didn’t deserve it, and he’d probably fuck it up, but for the first time in a while, Hank found himself really wanting to change. 

“Thank you.”


End file.
